Journal of Marine Science and Engineering Article Capacity Analysis for Approach Channels Shared by LNG Carriers Xiang Gao 1,2, Linying Chen 1,2,*, Pengfei Chen 1,2, Yu Luo 1 and Junmin Mou 1,2 1 School of Navigation, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430063, China;
[email protected] (X.G.);
[email protected] (P.C.);
[email protected] (Y.L.);
[email protected] (J.M.) 2 Hubei Key Laboratory of Inland Shipping Technology, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430063, China * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 28 July 2020; Accepted: 7 September 2020; Published: 9 September 2020 Abstract: The transport of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has significant impact on traffic capacity of waterways, especially the approach channels shared by LNG carriers and other types of ships (general cargo ships, container ships, etc.). Few studies take the behavioral characteristics of LNG carriers and their impacts into consideration. In this paper, we propose a framework for capacity analysis of shared approach channels based on the spatial–temporal consumption method. It consists of three modules: (1) the tide module predicts the tidal height and tidal time for identifying the time windows for LNG carriers; (2) the spatial–temporal consumption module is introduced to calculate the capacity of approach channels; (3) the LNG carrier navigation module is for analyzing the characteristics of LNG carriers and the impact on the capacity of approach channels. A spatial–temporal indexed chart is designed to visualize the utilization of the spatial–temporal resources. A case study on the approach channel of Yueqing Bay near the east coast of China is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the framework.